Clear ice maker, Bar ediition

Clear ice maker and 3D thermal simulation – computerized method of temperature prediction.

Look at your cocktail, 60% of it – clear ice. This ice maker creates it in 20 hours! Customer wanted to reduce overall dimensions, freezing time and material prize of an old design. After discussion, we set goals:

1 – To reduce silicone volume in half.
2 – To reduce plastic volume by 25%.
3 – To reduce the freezing time from 24h to 20h.
4 – Create new design.
5 – Check the results by thermal simulation.

Troubles

Create new design with half of silicone and 75% of plastic volumes, that will work properly.
Find solution for better thermal insulator with smaller dimensions.
Get freezing time of 20 hours.

Solutions

First I calculated the smallest wall thickness for silicone detail, add margin of safety ang create walls around the ice balls. These were required parts of silicone details. After I started designing variations of the model, at 13-th design we stopped. (Yeah!)
I obtained better insulating efficiency by using air as an insulator. Air has low thermal conductivity, that is why changing shape of thermal insulator to radiators type decrease thermal conductivity at all.
I made 18 thermal simulations after each upgrade of insulating efficiency. Each time I found out water's freeze time and compare it to real Ice Maker. The best result is in the design you can see at picture.

When all requirements met, I 3D printed a prototype and test Berlinzo Ice Maker in real life. All indicators were good. The customer was satisfied, work done!

Results

1 – Reduced silicone volume by 42.2%.
2 – Reduced plastic volume by 26.2%.
3 – Reduced freezing time to 20 h.
4 – Created selling design.
5 – Prototype 3D printed and tested.
6 – Overall reports of thermal simulations.

If you're interesting about my cases, feel free to visit the site freestov.com
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Have a nice day!